Before You Start

Binwalk supports Python 3.6+.

Installation

Installation follows the typical Python installation procedure:

# Python3.x
$ sudo python3 setup.py install

NOTE: Older versions of binwalk (e.g., v1.0) are not compatible with the latest version of binwalk. It is strongly recommended that you uninstall any existing binwalk installations before installing the latest version in order to avoid API conflicts.

Dependencies

Besides a Python interpreter, there are no installation dependencies for binwalk. All dependencies are optional run-time dependencies, and unless otherwise specified, are available from most Linux package managers.

Binwalk uses the nosetest library for tests and coverage for test-coverage:

$ sudo pip install nose coverage

Binwalk uses the pycryptodome (pycrypto-compatible module that is still maintained) library to decrypt some known encrypted firmware images:

$ sudo pip install pycryptodome

Binwalk uses pyqtgraph to generate graphs and visualizations, which requires the following (exact dependencies may vary based on your distro refer to deps.sh for more details):

$ sudo apt-get install libqt4-opengl python3-opengl python3-pyqt4 python3-pyqt4.qtopengl python3-numpy python3-scipy python3-pip
$ sudo pip3 install pyqtgraph

Binwalk's --disasm option requires the Capstone disassembly framework and its corresponding Python bindings:

$ sudo pip install capstone

Binwalk relies on multiple external utilties in order to automatically extract/decompress files and data:

# Install standard extraction utilities
$ sudo apt-get install mtd-utils gzip bzip2 tar arj lhasa p7zip p7zip-full cabextract cramfsprogs cramfsswap squashfs-tools sleuthkit default-jdk lzop srecord

# Install sasquatch to extract non-standard SquashFS images
$ sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev liblzo2-dev
$ git clone https://github.com/devttys0/sasquatch
$ (cd sasquatch && ./build.sh)

# Install jefferson to extract JFFS2 file systems
$ sudo pip install cstruct
$ git clone https://github.com/sviehb/jefferson
$ (cd jefferson && sudo python setup.py install)

# Install ubi_reader to extract UBIFS file systems
$ sudo apt-get install liblzo2-dev python-lzo
$ git clone https://github.com/jrspruitt/ubi_reader
$ (cd ubi_reader && sudo python setup.py install)

# Install yaffshiv to extract YAFFS file systems
$ git clone https://github.com/devttys0/yaffshiv
$ (cd yaffshiv && sudo python setup.py install)

# Install unstuff (closed source) to extract StuffIt archive files
$ wget -O - http://downloads.tuxfamily.org/sdtraces/stuffit520.611linux-i386.tar.gz | tar -zxv
$ sudo cp bin/unstuff /usr/local/bin/

Note that for Debian/Ubuntu users, all of the above dependencies can be installed automatically using the included deps.sh script:

$ sudo ./deps.sh

Installing the IDA Plugin

If IDA is installed on your system, you may optionally install the binwalk IDA plugin:

$ python setup.py idainstall --idadir=/home/user/ida

Likewise, the binwalk IDA plugin can be uninstalled:

$ python setup.py idauninstall --idadir=/home/user/ida

Uninstalling Binwalk

If binwalk has been installed to a standard system location (e.g., via setup.py install), it can be removed by running:

# Python3
$ sudo python3 setup.py uninstall

Note that this does not remove any of the manually installed dependencies.